Some music is made for the ritualistic moment, the fun of the dance, and the collective surge of energy it evokes. Music made for the stage, to be appreciated live, en mass, as it happens, in the moment. In The Key of David, the latest album from Millenium Resorts is not that sort of music. Well, I’m sure that it would make for a great live experience, should they choose to present it that way, but, as the band themselves recommend, it is perhaps better suited to a solo listening party, a gig for one, accessed via a set of headphones and possibly done so in a dark room, a great way of ensuring the sound is your only stimulus.
As previous singles such as Happiness and The Big Show have demonstrated, this is not the ambient or understated sonic world that such an approach might suggest but one of anthemic highs and wide-screen cinematics. But the great thing is that the whole album plays out like a journey, a sonic path opening up before you, you can travel from start to finish, and join the dots between these releases and the bigger picture
Following those lines takes us from the skittering soundscapes of Alpha to the staccato strut of Obscene and from the drifting, Vangelisian haze of Identity Theft to the logical endpoint, the white noise sonics of Omega.
I’m old enough to remember when all albums were made this way. When they were scheduled in such a way that the tracks took you on just such a sonic journey, leading you across the rise and fall, the peaks and troughs of a carefully constructed sonic landscape. Thankfully, the likes of Millenium Resorts also remember the poise and poignancy of such an approach.